Well, D12 are coming to Australia to ram home the point. Or at
least most of them are. The one person who isn't coming is the one
everyone wants to see.

How does the Detroit hip-hop crew hope to meet audience
expectation without Marshall Mathers III?

"Well, it's easy, man," says Von "Kuniva" Carlisle, one of D12's
six MCs. "We've been doing this for years - years, son. We just
know how to perform.

"If a member's missing or a member isn't missing, it doesn't
matter. It's gonna have the same effect still there because we all
still hold it down with each other, you know what I'm saying?
That's the advantage of having a group."

"The crowd loved us and we had sell-out crowds almost every
show. They knew that Marshall wasn't gonna be there and it still
was a great show. We're just tight. We're, like, one of the
tightest groups out there."

They're also among the maddest (with respect to late Wu-Tang
fruitcake ODB), funniest and dirtiest, hence the name - D12 is an
abbreviation for Dirty Dozen. The reason behind their apparent
misunderstanding of the word "dozen" is that Eminem, Kuniva, Proof
(born DeShaun Holton), Bizarre (Rufus Johnson), Swift (Ondre Moore)
and Kon Artis (Denaun Porter) each claim to have split
personalities.

If they've learned anything from Eminem, it's that political
incorrectness sells. Words such as "fag" and "bitch" are
commonplace in D12 world, a place that shares its name with the
title of their current second album.

"It depends on the tense you put it in, you know what I'm
saying?" says Proof, who founded the crew with the famously rotund,
often shower-capped Bizarre. "In hip-hop, when you say 'fag' to
somebody, the person you talking to nine times out of 10 ain't even
gay. We just say that.

"And when I say 'bitch' ... I don't call my mom a bitch. But
when my mom acts like a bitch, I call her a bitch, you know what
I'm saying? It depends on a person's perspective on that shit."

Perspective and/or highly questionable logic aside, D12 have
made some infectious jams - from Purple Pills (you may have
heard the clean version, Purple Hills), from debut album
Devil's Night, to My Band. Eminem's presence
guarantees such tracks' crossover appeal, but the band see
themselves as neither underground nor mainstream.

"We're not a hardcore hip-hop group, we're not a pop hip-hop
group or none of that shit," Kuniva says. "We're just a hip-hop
group. We just speak what we wanna speak and that's it.

"We're like news reporters sometimes. Y'know, we say stuff other
people don't tend to say or don't say but wanna say it ... We just
do what the f--- we wanna do, that's what it is."

Proof sees it as the band keeping it right as opposed to keeping
it real.

"Y'know, I got a couple of friends that have been indicted and
snitched on and there are a lot of people that do a lot of
different shit. And a lot of people say 'real'.

"It's only right and wrong to me. Ain't nobody keeping it real.
Keeping it real can be me smacking your mama, you know what I'm
saying? It might not be real to you but, man, that's some wrong-ass
shit!"

When asked what each member brings to the group, Proof says
"their own individuality ... each person brings their own aspect
and their own wittiness as far as poetry is concerned".

"Bizarre brings his wild self, Kuniva brings some witty lyrics,
I bring this great atmosphere, Swift, he just wreaks havoc ..."

Proof doesn't mention Eminem here - perhaps given Slim Shady's
absence from the D12 tour. But his comments undo Kuniva's argument
about there being five other MCs to compensate for the missing
member. If each person brings his own individuality, surely D12 are
always going to be a far superior proposition with six rather than
five? Kuniva sticks to his guns.

"Exactly, that's right. I agree 100 per cent. But that's what it
is. We just give the crowd all we've got and I think they
appreciate that."

Proof offers at least something by way of compensation for
Australian audiences, even though his tongue is wedged firmly in
his cheek.

"You got us coming out in kangaroo outfits with Foster's beers
in our hands and koala bears on our back," he says. "We're gonna do
the whole nine."